Barrington Bayley - Barrington Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus - The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis

Colonel Anamander looked at the commander, his lips curling. A timeship standing in orthogonal time had every advantage over one trying to attack it from the strat. It was not a tryst situation where each party was prevented by the rules of war from phasing out of the strat earlier than his antagonist and so pre-empting the appointed moment. This was like shooting ducks out of the air. They had simply to sit still and watch for ships to appear, focusing and firing before the enemy had a chance to do likewise.

Very soon the Hegemonics gave up the unequal fight. They were leaving it now for Base Ogop to be relieved by slower air and land forces.

Haight imagined those forces would start arriving in ten to twenty minutes. He reckoned on being able to hold the base for up to an hour. In that time the sample distorter would have to be found.

Reports began coming in. Fighting with the base staff. The technical teams going over the damaged ships, examining the workshops, questioning prisoners for some knowledge of the coveted weapon.

He controlled his impatience and sat stolidly, as if made of stone.

Fifteen minutes later radar reported strike aircraft converging from three directions. The Lamp of Faith lifted off the shipyard and hovered at two thousand feet. As the aircraft approached at supersonic speed their courses were tracked and plotted. At almost the same instant that the timeship released missiles to down them, the strike planes fired their own missiles. Those hurtling towards the Lamp of Faith were licked out of the sky by energy beams. The flagship’s own projectiles found their targets. Somewhere beyond the horizon the attacking planes rained down in fragments.

There was a lull. Occasionally surveillance craft screamed overhead at a height of miles. Haight let them go. The time-ship could stave off any amount of missile attack. The real fight would begin when the enemy brought in their own energy beamers.

So far the technical teams had discovered nothing. Haight was becoming worried. Half an hour after their landing, huge vehicles appeared over the horizon, moving swiftly forward on what was probably an air-cushion principle. Large-aperture beamer orifices were plainly visible. Behind them came troop-carriers carrying, he estimated, thousands of men with full equipment.

He put the Lamp of Faith down on the ground again to lower its profile.

The blue flashes of high-energy beams began to criss-cross one another like swords. Molten metal ran down the sides of the Lamp of Faith as the beams slowly ate into the structure of the ship.

Then the exchange died down as the flagship’s weapons put the Hegemonic beams out of action. But the respite could only be temporary. More and more projectors would be brought up until the ship’s resources – and those of the two destroyers – were beaten down.

As it was, the Infuriator had been silenced and the Song of Might had only one projector operating. Haight gave orders for any survivors on the grounded ship to come aboard the flagship. Song of Might he sent back into the strat for its own protection.

‘If we stay any longer, sir,’ Colonel Anamander reminded him, ‘we may not get away.’

He was referring to the possibility that the Hegemonics might be able to erect a time-block to prevent their escape pastward.

‘My orders are perfectly explicit, Colonel,’ Haight told him. ‘We are to stay until the distorter is found , whatever that might mean.’

‘Even if it means losing the Lamp of Faith ?’ Anamander seemed to find the notion incredible.

But Haight merely shrugged sardonically. ‘Yes… so what if we do? We are all expendable.’ His gaze flicked around him, as though he were able to look through walls and see his command in all its entirety. ‘What of the Lamp of Faith – do you imagine the empire cannot manage without it? The Invincible Armada will include a thousand ships as good as this one.’

The ship lifted off again and drifted beyond Base Ogop’s boundary to attack a concentration of projectors that was building up there. But it was forced to retreat. So many of its own beams were out of action that it was being outgunned, and while it left its central position, Hegemonic troops poured into the base to fight it out with the chron commandos.

The officer in charge of the technical teams spoke to Haight over a vidcom. His face was haggard with desperation.

‘There’s no distorter on the base, sir. We’ve been through everything.’

Haight cursed. ‘There has to be one!’ he snarled.

‘Sir—’

The Lamp of Faith lurched. One corner of the ship hit the concrete with a huge crunching sound. Moments later the whole mass slammed down as the lifting engines cut out and the great vessel rocked from side to side.

‘Should we phase out, sir?’ questioned Colonel Anamander in a low voice.

‘What did I just tell you, Colonel?’ Haight growled. ‘We don’t leave until we are successful, and that comes from the emperor himself.’

Captain Mond Aton had been largely unaware of events taking place outside the small bedroom where he lay. But he felt the sudden lurch followed by the impact, and knew that the ship was losing power.

The knowledge provoked only slight interest in him. The batman had brought him a passably fitting uniform. He had donned it and inspected himself in a full length mirror.

For a moment it had made him think he was back aboard the Smasher of Enemies . Things had started clicking into place in his mind.

The room shifted in perspective and suddenly acquired depth. It glowed with new colour. He was no longer in an insubstantial two-dimensional world. He could understand his surroundings again.

Now he lay quietly, considering the remarkable situation he was in.

After a while other distant noises began to intrude into his consciousness. The hissing of energy beams biting deeper into the ship. The spit of beam pistols closer by.

He rose and went into the main lounge. As he did so, Commander Haight burst in and slammed the door behind him, a gun in his hand.

‘What’s happened?’ Aton asked calmly.

Servants hurried into the room. Haight waved them away. He stepped to the large mahogany table and opened a panel in its top, turning a dial-like device this way and that.

Then he sat down at the table, his pistol pointing at the door, his free hand near the device, toying with a switch.

‘We couldn’t find a distorter,’ he rumbled. ‘Now the Hegemonics are all around us. The power has failed and our beams are gone. There’s fighting inside the ship.’

‘Is that a destruct device?’ Aton asked, eyeing the switch.

Haight nodded. ‘The one on the bridge doesn’t work. A long time ago I had an additional one installed here.’

‘Then what are you waiting for?’ Aton inquired pointedly.

The commander grunted. ‘The Hegemonics have offered a truce! It seems they want to talk to us, so I’ve agreed. Might as well hear what they have to say.’

‘They are coming here?’

‘Where else?’

Aton took a seat at the other end of the room. For some minutes they waited in silence.

At length there was the sound of footsteps and the door opened. Colonel Anamander entered. He surveyed the room and raised his eyebrows at Haight, who nodded.

Into the room came two tall slim men. They wore brocaded garments of yellow cloth that accentuated their slimness and gave them a formal elegance. The most striking feature of their apparel was their headgear: cylindrical hats over a foot high, surmounted by curved lips that projected forward for several inches.

Commander Haight kept his gun trained on them. ‘Forgive me if I do not rise to make a proper greeting,’ he said in a gravelly tone. ‘Announce yourselves.’